By Michelle Hough in southern Colombia

Ingrid Betancourt has been rescued after over six years in captivity in Colombia’s silent forty year conflict.
 
“Silent” because not many people outside Colombia will have heard about the Caritas aid worker killed in June; or the four teachers who were kidnapped – two of whom later killed – in the same week; or the three children who wandered into a field the day before Betancourt’s release to pick peaches and were blown up by landmines.
 
“The release of Ingrid Betancourt is very good news for the Church and a very good step to solving the humanitarian crisis in Colombia,” said Msgr Hector Fabio Henao, Secretary General of Caritas Colombia.
 
“However, we must wait to have a clearer map of the situation as it’s a very complicated crisis,” he said.
 
It is a crisis in which left-wing guerrilla groups, right-wing paramilitary and the army are at war and where an estimated four million people have been displaced since 1985 in a country which is the number one place in the world for landmine accidents.
 
“The bishops of Colombia are working hard with armed groups to convince them to try to establish the conditions of a just and negotiated peace in our country,” said Msgr Henao.
 
The bishops sometimes act as a bridge between armed groups and communities in an attempt to discuss peace and humanitarian issues. They also work along with organisations to help push legislation through Parliament which aims to give victims of the violence and displacement due compensation.
 
At a grassroots level, Caritas Colombia supports the victims of violence and their families and tries to involve communities in peace-making activities.
 
Msgr Henao says that those who work for Caritas on this level risk violence and sometimes pay with their lives – like  Felipe Landazury killed by armed men in Candelilla de la Mar, Tumaco near the Ecuador border on Tuesday, 24 June
 
“Armed legal groups don’t understand the commitment of the Church,” said Hector Fabio. “They get confused and think that if you’re working for the victims of the conflict, you’re working against them.”
 
The four teachers who were kidnapped recently in the diocese of Ipiales, where fighting is sometimes intense, may have been suspected by guerrillas of giving information to the army, says Msgr Henao.
 
Other teachers were threatened following their kidnapping and the whole population is afraid after what happened.
 
“In that area, the teachers are the only people working with the priests in local communities,” said Msgr Henao.
 
He says this is a very big problem as the diocese has lots of small schools for poor peasant children, but the numbers of teachers will dwindle if threats continue.
 
“So the diocese is trying convince guerrillas to change their position and allow teachers to go back to school because otherwise there will be no education for children in the near future,” said Msgr Henao.